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I was born in the Haig, grew up in Dovemount Place, started school at Trinity, moved to Burnfoot, and then on to the High School.

All that time I had a guilty secret – that we had to go across to Gala to see my Granny, because my father was a Gala man.

And although I was vaguely aware of some sort of Hawick connection – occasional comments about an uncle who was a mason and had opened the church next to Alan Watt’s newsagents – they never bothered to mention that Granny’s cousin had been a Cornet!

If I had known that then, it could have changed my life.

But I moved away from the town and it was only when I started to do a family history that the trail led from Gala back through Peebles to Lanark – and then swiftly back to Hawick and the Common Riding of 1919.

This blog starts with Tom Winning and his life – and will gradually include more of the Cornets

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3 thoughts on “About Hawick Cornets and me”

This is interesting: my great uncle was a Robert Dickson from Langholm, and its possible he was one of the men killed in the 1919 Peace Day accident on the Nipknows. I wonder if you could check this for me (I live in Worcester now so can’t easily get to the Hawick library!) – his parents would have been Frank and Ellen Dickson, and there must be something in the Hawick News of the time. By a strange coincidence – if it was my great uncle – a distant relative of my old High School history teacher Mr. Landles would have seen the whole thing!!